Free (1980) The Second Lady by Irving Wallace Page A

and she owned a small bungalow (well beyond her means) in Bethesda, Maryland. The KGB put her under immediate surveillance, while running a check on her past. Soon enough it was learned that,
    whenever the First Lady was out of the capital, the President would have Miss Raines in his bed until dawn. Shortly after this information had been confirmed, the KGB had its dossier on Isobel Raines’s previous activities. There was one unsavoury period. Five years earlier, Miss Raines had lived with a notorious Mafia boss in Detroit. The time had come for a sit with Miss Raines.
    Two efficient KGB agents, members of the Rezidentura attached to the Soviet embassy in Washington, one named Grishin, the other Ilf, travelled to Bethesda to pay a social call upon Isobel Raines. The resultant conversation had been fairly frank. The KGB agents hardly bothered to disguise the fact that this was outright blackmail. Although stricken by the knowledge that her secret past in Detroit was no longer secret, and that any leak of her past would end her wonderful job in the White House, Isobel Raines proved staunchly loyal to the President and his wife. She would not, whatever the cost to her, discuss the bed habits of the President or what she had heard of his wife’s behaviour. She admitted to a few sexual encounters with the President, but only ‘when the first Lady was travelling out of the city or - or recently when she was ill and couldn’t do anything with him’.
    Reporting their visit with Miss Raines to Razin in Moscow, Grishin and Ilf asked how they should proceed. One line in their report had made Razin curious and given him hope, the line that the First Lady recently was ill in a way that excluded sexual activity. Razin contacted his agents in Washington, told them not to expose Isobel Raines, not to see her again until ordered to do so.
    Now, in his office, seated beside Petrov, who had the old report in his hand, Razin recalled what had followed. Increasingly nervous about the lack of information on Billie Bradford’s sex life, uncertain where to torn next, Razin saw his opportunity and seized upon it. Days before departing for the Summit Conference in London, while his wife was in Los Angeles, the President had enjoyed Isobel Raines in his W’hite House bed. The following evening a presidential aide had been trapped with a prostitute. The President had sum-marily dismissed him from his post. At the next morning’s press conference, when questioned about the aide, the President had lectured the reporters on morality in government.
    This had not been lost on Razin in Moscow. Isobel Raines would be more fearful than ever. It was time for Grishin and Ilf to pay her another visit.
    . Isobel Raines had, indeed, been nervous and frightened. If she refused to talk, her own immorality would be made public, harming the President and destroying her own career. This time she talked. Not much, but a little, enough. She insisted that she knew nothing about Mrs Bradford’s sexual behaviour with her husband. This was not the kind of thing the President would ever discuss. He had summoned her to his bed only because he needed sexual release and he could not have it with his wife at the present time. He had told Isobel Raines that his wife had some kind of problem, and, her gynaecologist had ordered her to avoid sexual activity for six weeks, until he could analyse her tests.
    Unwittingly, Isobel Raines had given Razin what he wanted. In the three weeks that Vera Vavilova would be playing First Lady, there could be no sexual activity between herself and the President.
    The last obstacle to Project Second Lady had been removed. Petrov was thrilled, Razin was pleased, and Vera Vavilova was relieved.
    All this, while Vera continued to learn and rehearse, working steadily from daybreak to nightfall. Soon her work became more feverish. For, even as she studied the people and events of her new past, she had to contend with fresh people and the events of